Gasparilla King Blog

A Night Vision

After Adam backed out of the driveway and left Becca sitting beneath the live oak, she glanced down at the diary in her hands.

After Adam backed out of the driveway and left Becca sitting beneath the live oak, she glanced down at the diary in her hands. She sat frozen in the chair as panic began to rise within her. "No, no," said the voice above her head. "Come now." And this time, she couldn't fight it, will it away, or shake it free. The part of her that had struggled to maintain control let go and surrendered. She felt suddenly free and expansive at once. It was like she'd slipped into another world and was somehow tuned into a different frequency. She knew she was sitting beneath the live oak in her own yard, but what she saw and heard was different, as if someone had switched the channel and she was watching a new show.

The cicadas were still humming, but the night was younger somehow. The sun had not yet set, and was glowing like a hot, orange ball in the western sky. From where Becca sat, she could see a cactus that had gone wild and flared out on a weeded lawn that was now more sand than grass. A small house stood beyond it. On the front porch, an old woman sat wrapped in an afghan, while a young girl pushed herself back and forth on a double swing that hung from chains that were bolted into the porch's ceiling. Becca blinked a few times to clear the vision, but it remained intact. Later she would say the scene had been prophetic and had come to warn her. But tonight, she knew only that it had something to do with Rebecca's diary that she held close to her chest.

What did Becca envision that night sitting beneath the live oak? Who was the old woman wrapped in the afghan and the young girl who kept the porch swing moving with the push of her foot?

Read the next blog to find out how these new characters are connected to the Westcott family mystery and the disappearance of King Daniel.

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In chapter two of King Daniel, Becca has to grip the banister to steady herself when she climbs the stairs to her mother's bedroom. At the top of the staircase, she sees Eula, her beloved nanny, who has cared for Becca ever since she was born. From the novel we know Eula is an elderly family retainer who is slowly losing her eyesight. Here is a clip from that scene in the hall...

Daniel stood up and brushed smooth the creases in his overalls. His arms had grown hard and thin, and his belly had wasted, worn clean away. He was rugged and lean, a slide back to youth, and he imagined this time as an ecumenical passage, a time of shedding past sins. It was so clear now, what was not at all discernible in his life, and if he had to define it, he could, for the sense of what he felt this morning, watering the dead lawn and watching the worms slither up from the earth, was an adage, an apothegm that he could identify in one word: separate. And it was all so simple, the fallen leaves of an oak tree, squirrels rushing acorns to their nests, the lap of waves on Old Tampa Bay, a cardinal's song, the gusting wind, and sun, and heat, ice, flame, red and blue, and separate, and not as he viewed the world when he lived within its rainy arms.

Within minutes the Blew Bayou was gliding south toward the deep channel. They needed to get across the northern shoal of the island without hitting ground. Now the lighthouse beam lit up the port side of the boat markers that would guide them to the water that surrounded the island. Spider sat on the fishing throne keeping watch. As they motored toward the west side, the moon rose to twelve o'clock high and cast its light across Egmont Channel. Victor hiked a knee onto the seat next to the cabin door, so he could face the hull, while Kurt held on to the ladder. He told Evan to punch it.